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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.

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6 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–6.Back to highlights

Entries

  1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

  2. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Morehead creates the foundation behind his Chapel Hill gifts

    In 1945 Morehead created the Morehead Foundation to pay for the Morehead Building on the campus at Chapel Hill and to establish the scholarship that carries his name.

  3. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Morehead gives the university a million dollars for a planetarium

    In 1946 Morehead presented the university with one million dollars to build a planetarium and put the proposal to the Board of Trustees. The building opened in 1949.

  4. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Morehead Planetarium is dedicated

    Morehead Planetarium was dedicated at UNC on May 10, 1949.

  5. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Will W. Alexander speaks to the Chapel Hill AAUW on the Julius Rosenwald Fund

    Alexander, retired and living in the country near Chapel Hill, was scheduled to address the Chapel Hill branch of the American Association of University Women in the Morehead building on his years as director of the Julius Rosenwald Fund.

  6. Naming or commemoration · Morehead building, Chapel Hill Edmund Strudwick's portrait of C. T. Council is given to the School of Pharmacy

    University President Gordon Gray presented a portrait of Durham's C. T. Council, painted by Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough, to the UNC School of Pharmacy, where Dean E. A. Brecht accepted it at a luncheon in the Morehead building.

  7. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill, Morehead Planetarium Morehead gives the sundial in front of the planetarium

    In 1956 Morehead funded the sundial set in front of the planetarium building in Chapel Hill.

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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026